Lillian Gish in D.W. Griffith's 'Way Down East' (1920)

Faced with financial difficulties, poor innocent country girl, Anna Moore (Lillian Gish), goes to visit her rich Boston relatives, the Tremonts, to seek aid. There she meets handsome man-about-town playboy Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman), and is tricked into a fake wedding. When she becomes pregnant, he reveals the truth of their relationship and leaves her. Deserted by the man she thought was her husband, Anna is left penniless and alone to face the birth of her baby, named Trust Lennox, on her own.

After her mother's death, Anna takes refuge in a rooming house in Belden where her baby dies. Turned out by an unsympathetic landlady, the brokenhearted mother wanders until she finds employment at the farm of Squire Bartlett (Burr McIntosh), a stern but just man, who believes in a strict accounting for sin.

Despite being unofficially engaged, David (Richard Barthelmess), Squire Bartlett's son, falls in love with Anna, and she is about to accept her new found happiness when Sanderson appears and the squire learns that Anna had lived with him in sin. So, she rejects him due to her torrid past.

Lennox then shows up as an old friend of the Bartletts, and lusting for another local girl, Kate. Seeing Anna, he tries to get her to leave, but she refuses to go claiming she never did anything wrong, although she promises to say nothing about his past.

Finally, the woman running the boardinghouse while visiting the Bartletts recognizes Anna. Squire Bartlett eventually learns of Anna's past from Martha, the town gossip. In his anger, he tosses Anna from the house out into a blinding snow storm. She agrees to go, but not before naming the respected Lennox as her despoiler and the father of her dead baby. She becomes hysterical, lost in the raging storm, and she stumbles onto the frozen river where she faints.

David leads a search party. The unconscious Anna floats on an ice floe down a river towards a waterfall, until her rescue at the last moment by David from the drifting ice and certain death brings about their union in marriage after the squire and his wife learn Anna's true story.

A 1920 American Black & White silent romantic drama film produced & directed by D. W. Griffith, written by Anthony Paul Kelly and Joseph R. Grismer, based on Lottie Blair Parker's 1897 play of the same name, cinematography by G.W. Bitzer, starring Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Burr McIntosh, Kate Bruce, Mary Hay, Creighton Hale, Emily Fitzroy, Porter Strong, Edgar Nelson, Mrs. Morgan Belmont, Vivia Ogden, and George Neville.

This 19th century melodrama was Lottie Blair Parker's most popular full-length play. It is one of four film adaptations. There were two earlier silent versions and one sound version in 1935 starring Henry Fonda. Griffith's version is particularly remembered for its climax in which Lillian Gish's character is rescued from doom on an icy river.

Joseph R. Grismer's wife, the Welsh actress Phoebe Davies, became identified with the play beginning in 1897 and starred in over 4,000 performances of it by 1909, making it one of the most popular plays in the United States. Davies died in 1912, having toured the play for well over ten years. The play, an old-fashioned story that espoused nineteenth-century American and Victorian ideals, was considered outdated by the time of its cinematic production in 1920.

The famous ice-floe sequence was filmed in White River Junction, Vermont. An actual waterfall was used, though it was only a few feet high. The long shot where a large drop is shown was filmed at Niagara Falls. The ice was sawed or dynamited before filming could be done. During filming, a small fire had to be kept burning beneath the camera to keep the oil from freezing. At one point, Griffith was frostbitten on one side of his face. No stunt doubles were used at the time, so Gish and Barthelmess performed the stunts themselves. Gish's hair froze, and she lost feeling in her hand from the cold. It was her idea to put her hand and hair in the water, an image which would become iconic. Her right hand would be somewhat impaired for the rest of her life. The shot where the ice floes are filmed going over the waterfall was filmed out of season, so those ice floes are actually wooden. The ice floe scene is an early example of parallel cinematic action.

Similar to other Griffith productions, this was subjected to censorship by some American state film censor boards. Pennsylvania film board required over 60 cuts in the film, removing the mock marriage and honeymoon as well as any hints of pregnancy, effectively destroying the film's integral conflict.

Griffith's most expensive film to date, and commercially successful. The fourth-highest grossing silent film in cinema history, taking in more than $4.5 million at the box office in 1920, second only to "Birth of a Nation" (1915).

A poignant melodrama made memorable by a tremendous climax that still holds up as one of the most exciting scenes on film.

[spacecowgurl]

You didn't have a phone or 911. As I felt Anna betrayed 💔 then live with the humiliation of keeping a secret that was immoral and somewhat illegal in certain States at that time, I embraced this particular experience of DWG more than many others. Thank you and praise be to those who restored.

[chicagogyrl]

Why is she living like this when the baby’s father is so rich??! 😂🤣